For It Is Man's Number: ann-margret

Showing posts with label ann-margret. Show all posts

Sunday, 31 August 2025

Netflix And Chill: Taxi (2004)

An American remake of an action comedy from the late 1990s, one written by no less than Luc Besson, Taxi has a good bit of talent behind the camera. Tim Story is the director, and the screenplay is from Robert Ben Garant, Jim Kouf, and Thomas Lennon. It's just a shame that Jimmy Fallon is one of the leads.

Queen Latifah is Isabelle 'Belle' Williams, a woman who is at the very start of her career as a taxi driver. She has spent years being a courier, and has even managed to get caught speeding while whizzing about on her bicycle. She's a very talented driver, and very quick. That's why she proves to be a useful asset when a police officer named Andrew Washburn (Fallon) jumps into the back of her cab and asks her to head to the site of a nearby bank robbery. Williams and Washburn end up working together on the case, although it's not made official. But it might take a speedy and slick taxi driver to catch a speedy and slick getaway driver.

Despite the work of the writers, there's nothing very witty or entertaining here, not outwith the stunt driving anyway. A large part of that is due to the screenplay just being a bit too thin, but I think the problem is almost equally down to having Fallon in the role of Washburn. While I can tolerate him in some of his TV spots, Fallon has never done enough in movies to fully win me over, which is a major hurdle when he's given a lead role.

Queen Latifah certainly tries her best to balance out the awfulness of Fallon though, and she's fantastic in her role (as she has been in many of the movies she has starred in). She cannot carry the whole film on her shoulders though, and that's what is being asked of her. Henry Simmons isn't too bad, playing her partner, and Ann-Margret has fun in her scenes, but Jennifer Esposito, Gisele Bündchen, and everyone else are just disappointing non-entities.

Similar to so many other American remakes of “foreign-language” originals, Taxi succeeds when it replicated the scenes that worked just as well in the original, but falters in the attempts to make everything more appealing to mainstream American audiences. You can watch this and not hate it. You’re unlikely to enjoy it as much as the first film though, as long as you can overcome the teeny tiny obstacle of subtitles.

This review may not have given you anything substantial to digest. Nor does the movie. I'm happy enough to have been critical without being too insulting. I'd encourage people to check out almost anything else directed by Tim Story, or indeed anything else starring Queen Latifah.

4/10

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Monday, 7 July 2025

Mubi Monday: Carnal Knowledge (1971)

While it's over half a century old, Carnal Knowledge doesn't feel dated. That's as impressive as it is sad. Since finally watching it I keep making a joke about it being a film obviously loved by Neil LaBute, but I'm not sure I mean it. I mean . . . I DO mean it, but probably not as a joke. There's something in the bitterness and the misogyny here that is very much a precursor to the kind of sharp and jagged explorations of the same subject matter that LaBute would deliver in many of his own works.

Jonathan (Jack Nicholson) and Sandy (Art Garfunkel) are two friends who have plenty of conversations about the women they decide to pursue. This is all set up in the very earliest scene, a sequence that has Sandy trying to establish a connection with Susan (Candice Bergen) after Jonathan basically says "I'll let you have her." Susan doesn't realise that she's going to end up in the middle of a strange three-way relationship with both Sandy and Jonathan, at least until one of them gets bored with things. Jonathan also gets involved with Bobbie (Ann-Margret), a woman who is worn down and seriously affected by the mistreatment she suffers from him. As time rolls on, various women see Jonathan unable to extricate himself from his self-created black hole of self-loathing and inability to view women as nothing more than potential conquests. It just remains to be seen whether or not Sandy will be locked in there with him.

While there's no denying that the heart of Carnal Knowledge is the bold and unflinching screenplay from Jules Feiffer, which lays bare an attitude and culture that persists to this day, it's hard not to give just as much credit to director Mike Nichols and his main cast members. Nichols may not have avoided a number of mistakes throughout his decades-spanning directorial career, but his best works cast a long shadow over a few different eras of cinema. This is one of his best, taking a scalpel to examine some of the wounds of the 1970s that were left to scab over by those wandering around aimlessly in the 1960s. Could Benjamin Braddock have turned into Jonathan one day? Maybe, maybe not.

Garfunkel does very well in his role, being a bit more timid, yet also far too willing to join in with his friend when it seems as if it may prove to be a winning tactic for him, and all of the women make an impact in various ways (Bergen, Ann-Margret, Cynthia O'Neal, Carol Kane, and Rita Moreno), but the film belongs to Nicholson, who manages to somehow keep his character riveting even as he becomes more and more overtly loathsome. He's quite pathetic and horrible, but that is sometimes hidden away under a projected image of false confidence and bravado.

Carnal Knowledge isn't an easy watch. I'm not sure I'd even call it an entertaining one. It's thought-provoking and vital though, an essential part of a conversation that is still happening over half a century after it was first released. The fact that we're still having the conversation may well make your heart sink, but it's also better than this kind of behaviour playing out without people having the knowledge to more easily recognise it and call it out. And at least there's a somewhat happy ending here, seeing the lengths one character has to go to in order to hold on to any imagined scrap of power.

9/10